1. Field of the Invention
This invention broadly relates to modular building construction, and specifically to a method to make dihedrally connected building blocks and a built-in slot connector to erect or to make the structure of buildings, billboards, towers, roads, runways, dams, bridges, shore and offshore structures, furniture and their respective scale models for testing and design.
These scale model building blocks modules also can be profitable if used as teacher's aids and toys.
2. Prior Art
The construction of buildings by a plurality of similar simple polyhedral members, generally rectangular prisms, is practice followed since ancient times for two main reasons. The obvious advantage is the low cost mass production of those members as is explained in Bardot's U.S. Pat. No. 3,777,359, the less obvious advantage is the low cost construction of scale models for testing and design. There are three main disadvantages of the simple brick:
They are too massive, to heavy. PA0 They are assembled only into prismatic structures. PA0 They are weakly connected. PA0 Heretofore those disadvantages had been alleviated, generally only demeaning the main advantages. PA0 The solution of the massiveness problem by making holes in the members creates, once assembled, conduits which could be another advantage; however, those conduits are by means of simple molding not connected, they are parallel. PA0 1. The union of two frustums by their congruent base. PA0 2. The removal of a central portion through the plane section of the frustum. PA0 3. The making of holes through the peripheral side of the frustum. PA0 4. The truncation of the right edge of the frustum. PA0 5. The rounding of the right side of the frustum. PA0 6. The magnetization of the frustum. PA0 7. The magnetization of the module.
The second disadvantage have been partially overcome by making complex polyhedrons, see Hervath, U.S. Pat. No. 3,783,571. However, this second problem is not widely seen as such. Most designers are still exploring the mysteries of the cube structure; NASA space station structure, for example, having an expensive and very sophisticated system designed to be assembled into forty six different polyhedral arrangements, it's timidly cubical. The third problem, the weakness of the connection, perhaps the most elusive, had been attacked economically by perfecting a tongue and groove holding and locking systems, see Silvius' U.S. Pat. No. 3,687,500, for a dihedral slot connection.
The building blocks of the art known as space structures are a different case. They are vertically connected frames (see Pearce's U.S. Pat. No. 3,600,825). These structures dispel the three problems and the two main advantages entirely, generally adding problems of their own, such as low tolerance edge members length.
Space structures may be visualized as a plurality of assemble polyhedral bricks from which everything had been removed except a small portion along the edges; those edge-members are connected at the vertexes or corners of the polyhedrons.
Space structures, generally, have two main component part, a member and a connector. The member is an elongated prism or a tube whose cross section center is the edge of the polyhedrons and the connector is usually ball shaped, at a vertex of the polyhedrons.
The space structure member in principle, can be easily mass produced by extrusion of simple molding, the multiple connector the other hand has eluded and heretofore inexpensive solutions. For this problem classical space structures, regardless of their high strength to weight ratio and the immense variety of shapes they can form, had been relegated in architectures usually to trusses or to secondary functions such as canopies. An in the construction industry, space structures had been shadowed by the simple-face connected-square-prismatic building blocks.
Another problem associated with the ingenious solution invented since Bell's U.S. Pat. No. 4,686,800.